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A desperate and largely unknown humanitarian crisis is deteriorating in the Lake Chad Basin region of West Africa, forcing millions of people to flee their homes and leaving millions more in need of humanitarian assistance. Oxfam is providing life-saving support but help is urgently needed to prevent the crisis turning into a catastrophe.

Since January 2015 more than 1 million women and men fleeing war, persecution, natural disasters and poverty entered or passed through Greece in search of safety and a better life. We are working in Athens, Lesvos island and the Epirus region of North-West Greece responding to the urgent needs of people arriving. Support our work.

Did you know that 90% of Africa’s rural land is undocumented, leaving rural communities vulnerable to land-grabbing? It's a matter of human rights. It's their land. Join our collective effort to make a difference not just for Indigenous Peoples and local communities but for the health of the environment and ending poverty and inequality.

Every year, the gap between rich and poor gets even wider – and it’s being fuelled by the use of tax havens. Today, 62 individuals have the same wealth as the poorest half the people on our planet. It is time to bring an end to inequality. It is time to Even it up!

Two years of extended fighting has forced thousands of people to seek refuge in Nyal and the islands surrounding it. Many must regularly walk long distances alone in search of aid and food. We are assisting them to access free and safe travel by training canoe operators and distributing vouchers for transport.

For 40 years, the Quechua communities in Peru have lived with contaminated rivers, and poor health as a result of oil drilling. Teddy Guerra is leading the effort to obtain integral land rights for his community before any more concessions are given to oil companies. Read his story and sign the petition.

Millions of people are being forced to flee their homes, risking everything to escape conflict, disaster, poverty or hunger. We are working in nine of the ten top refugee source countries as well as in refugee host countries. We urgently need your help to reach people in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and in Europe.

With no end in sight to the conflict in Syria, hundreds of thousands of people are living in desperate conditions and exposed to continuing violence. Today, half the pre-conflict population of 22 million Syrians have fled their homes and more than 13.5 million people urgently need your help.

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About GROW

Millions are going to bed hungry. Together we can change this.

Everything connects: food and oil prices, flatlining yields, climate change, gender inequality, land grabs... These issues combine to create a system that's dominated by a few powerful companies and governments. We need a new way of thinking, and ideas that hold a promise of a better future for the many not just the few.

Short-sighted biofuels strategies play a part too - taking food off people's plates and putting it into car tanks.

Dysfunctional commodities markets mean that food prices go up faster and higher than they should. The effects on poor people are painfully simple. Parents choose between feeding their children and feeding themselves.

Food and Climate change

As temperatures rise, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe. Rising temperatures will cause crop yields to fall - possibly to half of their current levels in some African countries. Changes in seasons will make it even harder for farmers to know when to sow, cultivate and harvest. Ultimately, it will prevent farmers from growing enough to eat and earn a living. Farmers are struggling to cope. And nearly a billion of the world’s poorest people – people who did the least to cause climate change – are finding it even harder to feed their families.

Wild weather and unpredictable seasons are changing what farmers can grow and are making people hungry. Food prices are going up. Food quality is going down. Soon, climate change will affect what all of us can eat. That’s why we’re calling on governments and big businesses to cut emissions, to help farmers deal with changing weather and make sure there’s enough good food for us all. To stop climate change making people hungry we need a fair global agreement that will keep global warming below 2 degrees and avoid catastrophic climate change. Nothing else is good enough.

Land grabs

Demand for land has soared as investors look for places to grow food for export, grow crops for biofuels or simply buy up land for profit. But in many cases land sold as 'unused' or 'undeveloped' is actually being used by poor families to grow food. These families are forcibly kicked off the land. Promises of compensation are broken. Often people are violently evicted by hired thugs. Land is going for as little as 2.5 cents per hectare in South Sudan.

Getting to grips with land grabs is possible. We've already had success. But for it to happen, effective global action is necessary. Governments need to provide secure access to land for smallholder farmers and especially for women - who often do most of the work on the land, but face the biggest battle to call it their own. Biofuels strategies need to be given serious thought, because any plan that takes crops off people's plates and puts them into people's car tanks obviously isn't working. And investments need to be made with marginalized communities - as opposed to only profit margins - in mind.

Support for small-scale farming

As things stand, yield growth is falling, because soils can only produce a certain amount of crops - no matter how much fertilizer you spray on them. All that fertilizer also has a massive carbon footprint. Yet 500,000 small-scale farms around the world are helping to put food on the plates of two billion people - or one in three people on earth - without causing pain to our planet. Ironically, it is these people who make up most of the hungry people.

By supporting small-scale farmers with sustainable techniques - we can help produce enough to feed a growing population, without pushing our climate further out of control.

Challenging the private sector

While the food system is complex and its problems multi-faceted, we know that the world’s largest food and beverage companies have enormous influence. Their policies drive how food is produced, the way resources are used and the extent to which the benefits trickle down to the marginalized millions at the bottom of their supply chains. The GROW Behind the Brands campaign focuses on the world’s biggest food and beverage companies, assessing their performance against key standards, engaging with their customers and encouraging a ‘race to the top’ to improve private sector policies. It aims to provide customers who buy well known brands with the information they need to hold these companies to account for what happens in their supply chains.

The world’s largest food and beverage companies have a lot of power – but you have more. And because they’re not using theirs enough to help poor communities or the planet, you can use yours to change the way they do business.

Oxfam International Survey

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